Arizona Coyotes: Preparing For An Expansion Draft

The Arizona Coyotes and the rest of the NHL are potentially headed down the path of expansion, which lead to an expansion draft and the necessity to lock up certain players from prying eyes.

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?

Good news? Ok; the Coyotes aren’t going to be relocating anywhere outside of the Valley anytime soon!

The bad news? Not moving out of the Valley will cost the Arizona Coyotes two players.

The National Hockey League recently announced the ground rules for a 2016 NHL Expansion Draft, should the commissioner Gary Bettman and his clan of general managers opt to admit Las Vegas and/or Quebec City into the league’s guild of franchises.

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In short, the league specified that either five forwards and three defenseman can be protected or eight total skaters of any position can be screened from the expansion franchises’ newly crowned GMs. Only one goaltender can be salvaged from possibly being head-hunted. The league also specified that first and second-year professional players are exempt from the Expansion Draft.

However, two key points that the early rules released did not mention is whether players with No-Trade or No-Movement Clauses (NTC/NMC’s) are protected from expansion drafting. That specific rule doesn’t necessarily impact the Coyotes too heavily, although it does impact how the entire league will go about signing restricted and unrestricted free agents.

The other key point to note is how restricted and unrestricted free agencies will operate given an expansion draft. This point heavily affects how the Coyotes manage who they protect.

In this study, I will assume the league will not honor NTC/NMC’s because it will force teams to cover there best players and therefore force teams like Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles, Anaheim and New York to share some of their talent…forcefully.

I’m also under the assumption that both Las Vegas and Quebec City will be awarded franchises and that restricted free agents are unprotected because, as previous expansion drafts have demonstrated, new teams need youth to be competitive in the NHL so forcing teams to decide on which RFA’s to cover makes the new teams more realistic.

Furthermore, I outline the unrestricted free agent process as: 1) teams can attempt to sign their own departing free agents or let them walk, 2) newly established franchises have a one day jump start on courting newly disenfranchised free agents and then, 3) all teams can get in on the free agent free for all. Moreover, I am writing under the assumption that teams who sign expiring UFA’s which were previously on their rosters have automatic protection of said players because otherwise teams would not risk signing any UFA’s at all.

Also worth noting is that teams with players bound to depart as UFA/RFA’s count as expansion draft eligible players, meaning that an expansion team can draft that player’s negotiating rights to become their own in hopes of signing that player instead of picking up a contract for a player from another team that the expansion team didn’t negotiate. This rule makes sense because it could strategically prevent the other expansion team from attempting to negotiate a contract in the early expansion team free agent market.

As a general disclaimer, all of the salary cap and contract situation information was extrapolated from General Fanager.

With that mouthful said, here’s a breakdown of who gets resigned and therefore protected, who the Coyotes must outright protect, who the Yotes leave exposed and, finally, who is most likely to get head-hunted.

Next: Protected Resigned UFA Players